When integrated circuits are implemented on a circuit board, the integrated circuits communicate after the circuit board is powered up. However, some integrated circuits may take longer to power up than other integrated circuits or devices on the circuit board. For example, some integrated circuits having programmable resources, such as programmable logic devices (PLDs) or any integrated circuit having programmable resources, require that configuration bits be downloaded to configuration memory of the integrated circuit to implement a given circuit design in the programmable resources. The operation of the circuit board may be affected by any delay encountered in loading the configuration bits into the configuration memory. For example, some devices on the circuit board may not be able to begin operation until all configuration bits are loaded into the configuration memory.
More particularly, some devices of a circuit board may not participate in early board behavior until a “DONE” signal is received from an integrated circuit which is loading configuration bits. Such a situation unnecessarily impedes the power-up cycle of the circuit board. While the DONE signal may be necessary for certain functions implemented by integrated circuits or other devices on the circuit board, it may be beneficial to implement other functions of certain integrated circuits or other device of the circuit board before the DONE signal is generated.